Health Topics & Resources

UC Davis Cancer Center launched an organization formalizing its collaborations with cancer centers throughout Northern and Central California. Called the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, the organization unites five hospital-based cancer centers dedicated to providing quality patient care in community settings. Scott Christensen, a UC Davis associate professor of hematology and oncology, serves as medical director of the organization.

In addition to UC Davis Cancer Center in Sacramento and its satellite clinics in midtown Sacramento, Rocklin and Elk Grove, network members are Fremont-Rideout Cancer Center in Marysville, Mercy Cancer Center in Merced, Regional Cancer Center at ValleyCare in Pleasanton and the Gene Upshaw Memorial Tahoe Forest Cancer Center in Truckee.

This is the first specialty-care network for UC Davis and is believed to be one of the first devoted to cancer care for a public institution.

An important feature of the network is "virtual tumor boards." All network sites are linked through state-of-the-art telemedicine technology, giving oncologists and others involved in cancer care convenient opportunities to meet via real-time video-conferencing, share medical information and reach consensus on patient treatment plans. These sessions will also be utilized to evaluate appropriate clinical trials opportunities and identify patients who should be referred to UC Davis for specialty care. UC Davis physicians will also utilize the technology to provide education sessions on the latest advances in cancer treatment. The technical infrastructure for virtual tumor boards was established with funding from Blue Shield of California Foundation and support from participating facilities.

UC Davis Cancer Center -- the nation's 61st National Cancer Institute center - serves more than 9,000 patients each year at its clinics in Sacramento. The center is the region's only comprehensive, integrated cancer program, providing both basic and advanced cancer care. Its research program is the first to link the physicians and researchers throughout UC Davis with scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory toward the goal of speeding progress on early cancer detection, reducing overall cancer incidence, enhancing patient quality-of-life, improving survival rates and making discoveries that will one day cure cancer.